


Red Sand

by Tonight_At_Noon



Category: The End Of The Fucking World (TV), The End of the F'ing World (TV 2017)
Genre: Comfort, F/M, Romance, had to write this one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-26
Updated: 2018-01-26
Packaged: 2019-03-09 20:15:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13488942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tonight_At_Noon/pseuds/Tonight_At_Noon
Summary: Alyssa sneaks into the hospital where James is being held following his capture.





	Red Sand

**Author's Note:**

> Are you sick of these yet? God knows I'm not. 
> 
> Enjoy. And thanks for reading.

I look the police officer over carefully from where I sit, watching his heavy eyelids droop over his evil eyes. He shouldn’t be too hard to fool. He looks like quite an idiot.

Nurses and doctors pass by on a continual loop, each of them shooting nervous glances at the doorway behind the drowsy PC. I want to tell them all to fuck off. I want to shout it really, really loudly. Scream it until I can’t speak anymore. Until there’s blood coming out of my mouth. But I stop myself. Making a scene won’t do me any good. No one can know I am here. Mum thinks I’m tucked underneath my duvet like some fucking caterpillar waiting to become a butterfly.

They’re scared of him. They’re all terrified he’s going to escape his restraints and slaughter them as if he is a psychotic serial killer.

Pussies. Each and every one of them.

None of them know who he is. They don’t know what really happened that night. They think they do because of the shitty news coverage, but the media is full of liars and money-loving fakes. And a story about an unhinged boy on a crime spree sneaking into a rapist’s house intending to murder said rapist sells better than the truth. That James only killed him to protect me.

He’s a hero. He deserves a medal, not shackles. Not a bullet hole in his left arm.

I heard on the BBC they had to give him blood transfusions because of how much of his own supply he lost on the beach. Because the bullet that hit him snagged an artery on its way out.

It’s been nearly a week, and I’ve unintentionally blocked that day from my memories, but I remember that bit. I hear that final gunshot as I sit staring at the sleeping officer and I see James go down as if it’s happening all over again. He sprawls on the ground, arms and legs at strange angles. I’m still screeching his name, but he isn’t moving. And there’s red. It’s everywhere, spilling over the wet sand …

I close my eyes before I lose my shit in the middle of the hospital. I breathe in a shaky breath, clutching the seat of the uncomfortable chair I am occupying near James’ room. The scratchy vinyl feels gross, but the cracks in the material scrape my palms and the pain is somehow soothing.

I think I’ve always needed a little bit of pain to get me through the day. It’s why I put up with Tony for so long. Why I let my mum talk down to me like I was the most massive disappointment. Of course, I’m suffering a lot more than I’m used to at the moment. General teenage angst seems to have not prepared me for a situation like this. A situation that involves the boy you love being shot and then shackled to a hospital bed.

I am so lost right now.

But I know if I could see him, just for a second, that everything would fall back into place. I won’t be so lost when I get past that snoozing guard.

I open my eyes and get to my feet. It’s time for some fucking action. I pinch my cheeks, slouch my shoulders, and push my bottom lip out. Satisfied that I look like someone in need of some help, I approach the policeman.

I poke him hard on the arm. He jerks awake, and for a moment I just want to slap him. Bring him to the ground and beat the shit out of him. But I manage to hold myself back.

The man’s bulging eyes look me up and down. His face softens.

It is this moment I am outrageously glad my parents’ genes mixed in just the right way to make me look like a fucking twelve-year-old.

“What’s the matter, sweetheart?” he asks in that voice my mum uses when she’s talking to the twins.

Ugh. The desire to punch him comes over me again. He’s even more fucking disgusting than I thought.

“Some—someone stole my bag.“ I sniffle, watching the geezer before me take on a hardened look of determination. "It had a present for my mum in it.”

“Okay, darling. Which way did he go?” He reaches out for my hand, but I quickly use that one to point behind me.

No way do I want this old creep touching me.

“That way. I think I saw him going down the stairs. He’s probably not even here anymore.” I put my face in my hands and pretend to cry. I make ugly noises for added effect.

Maybe I should be a fucking actor when I grow up. Do they let criminals on TV?

“Don’t cry,” he says. “Don’t cry. Look. I can’t leave this spot, but I can ask a nurse to take you down to the security desk and they can help find your bag. Okay?”

Not okay. So  _not_  okay.

I remove my hands, frowning. “I need to find it now! My mum is dying of fucking  _cancer_  and you can’t be a decent enough policeman to help me get back the present I bought for her with literally all of my fucking money? What if she dies in the time it takes for me to go down and start explaining this shit show to someone else?”

Gotcha.

The officer’s face is wide. His mouth hangs open. His saucepan eyes swerve around the room, making sure no one is watching us.

“Okay,” he says in an angry, hushed tone. “Okay, I’ll see what I can do. What did the man look like?”

He stands up, straightening the weapons belt around his hips.

“Tall. Dark eyes, brown hair. Wearing a dark grey sweater with blue jeans and black snazzy shoes. Tan. Probably forty or so,” I say. It’s Tony’s description. Maybe he’ll be walking down the street when the PC comes along. 

Turning as the policeman does, my back is now to the door. 

I can practically feel James.

My heart thumps wildly in anticipation. It hurts. I can’t breathe.

“Alright.” He motions to the seat at the back of my knees. “Stay here. Make sure no one goes inside.”

“Why?” I ask as he starts walking away. “What’s behind the door?”

“A monster,” he says.

That’s it. If I see him again, I’m definitely punching him.

I nod in agreement to his request, staring after him as he disappears round a corner.

This is it. I turn towards the room and shove the chair out of the way, moving close enough to the door that I can smell the wood. I reach for the handle. It’s cold, but unlocked. Twisting slowly, my eyes darting left and right, praying to the countless number of deities I’ve heard of throughout my whole life that I won’t get caught, I hear a click and the door falls inward. I go with it, pressed to the wood, and sneak inside the room.

I actually gasp. Like a fucking cartoon or something. The door closes softly behind me. I look around the room. There are wires and machines everywhere. Beeping noises collapse against my eardrums.

A heartbeat.  _James_ ’ heartbeat.

And there he is. Right in front of me, asleep, looking sickly and pale and like he hasn’t properly showered in a few days. His arm is in a sling. He is connected to a saline drip through an IV via his uninjured arm. He is cuffed, too. To the side of the bed. There is a metal handcuff around his thin wrist.

God, I am so fucked off. I want to go at the restraint with a chainsaw.

Looking at him makes me want to cry. It always has. Ever since we first met. But right now, I really want to cry. More badly than I have ever wanted to before.

But I shouldn’t. I can’t. I need to be strong for him.

Swallowing the giant cricket ball forming in my oesophagus, I creep on my tiptoes towards the giant hospital bed. He looks even worse close up. There’s a dark shadow over the bottom half of his face. Deep purple bags lie underneath his closed eyes.

I’m too far gone. I can’t stop the tears. They crawl down my cheeks, slip past my chin, and land on the grey-blue blanket covering James’ body. One, as I move my head to get a better look at his face, drips over his eyelids.

He comes awake. The beeping grows quicker. I swear my lungs have stopped working. Reaching out, I place my hand over his mouth as his eyes snap open. His jaw parts. Hidden behind my palm, I feel his heavy breaths bathe my skin.

“ _Shh_ ,” I warn, breathless. “I’m not supposed to be here. We don’t have much time.”

He shakes his head and I lift my hand. “You need to leave,” he says. It comes out all croaky and dry. He’s broken.

It makes me so angry. If he had just let me come with him, none of this shit would be happening.

If only I hadn’t been silly enough to believe my dad was a decent fucking human being, we would be in Switzerland by now, hiding in a bakery or skiing down some snow-capped mountain.

“I’m staying,” I say defiantly. He can’t tell me what to do.

He starts to sit up, but the effort exhausts him and he quickly lies back down. His brilliant eyes—the most beautiful things I’ve literally ever seen—gaze up at me. “I don’t want you to see me like this.”

To be honest,  _I_   _don’t_  want to see him like this. But I hold off on telling him that. “I don’t care what you look like. I don’t care that you’re handcuffed.  _James_ ,” I say, the tears forming again. I reach for his chained hand. His fingers are sweaty, but he holds onto me regardless, entwining our fingers. I could collapse in a heap of despair like those women in the 19th century used to. “What’s gonna happen to you?”

“I’m not sure,” he says.

The words come out thin and brittle. I think there’s a cricket ball in his throat too. With my spare hand, I grab the cup of water by his bed and slowly, like he’s a baby, I tip the cup towards his mouth. He swallows a couple of gulps and coughs away any excess dryness. He mutters a thanks and I return the cup to its original spot.

“They’re keeping me here until my arm heals a bit more,” he says. “And then I’ll be moved to a jail to await trial. Then I’ll be prosecuted.”

He says it with such indifference that I find myself wanting to take him by the shoulders and shake him viciously.

“How can you be okay with this?” I ask, my face hot and wet. My lips tremble. My forehead hurts from frowning. “None of this is okay. None at all. It’s a giant mess—a total miscarriage of justice.”

I’ve been watching a lot of that American TV show  _Law and Order_ while under house arrest.

The longer I stare frustratedly at James half-lying down on his hospital bed, the blurrier he gets. But I blink rapidly, clearing my vision, when his face bunches. He’s crying too. Not as much as me, but there’s a small tear trolling down his scruffy face. Instinct compels me to wipe it away. I scrape at it with my thumb and hold my hand against his warm cheek. He presses into me, nostrils billowing like a curtain caught by the wind.

Okay. So, he isn’t okay with this.

“I’m sorry,” I say, rubbing the tear back into his skin. “I know you’re just trying to be brave.”

“I just,” he says, “want to be with you.”

My heart is going to explode. Is it possible for words to kill you?

“And I know that when they put me away, I’m not going to be able to be with you anymore,” he continues, the words vibrating. “I don’t want that to happen.”

Fuck. Neither do I.

“I’ll come see you,” I promise. “And when you get out, we can be together again.” My knees are starting to buckle under all the pressure. I hold tight to James. “Maybe we can get married … and then I’d get those conjugal visit things.”

It’s a joke. Mum would sooner disown me and throw me in the streets than allow me to marry a convicted felon.

But it does make James laugh. And that makes me smile. And some of that pressure lifts away.

“You would visit me?” he asks, and I sense the genuine worry.

“Yes. Fuck, I’d be in there with you if I could.”  _If you’d let me_. “Can I lie down?”

“What?”

“In the bed with you,” I say. “Just for a minute.” The guard’ll be on his way back soon. I’ll need to set off before then. But I need to lie with him. To feel his body against mine one last time before he’s taken away from me.

“I don’t know how easy it will be.” James looks to his shackled wrist and then to his bullet-hole-ridden arm.

I start climbing in, kicking my sandals off and bunching up the yellow sundress Mum got me when I was released from hospital the day James got captured. I wore it so she would let me out of the house. How long does she think it takes to pick up chocolate from the Co-op?

James can’t move a lot, but he slides over to make room for me. Lying on my side, pressing my hand flat against his chest, I rest my head on his shoulder. We sigh together. A sound of true contentment.

As much as he can, James holds me. His shackled fingers bend and move over the skin of my neck. I shiver into his hospital gown. For someone who looks so horrible, he smells just the same as always. Like lavender soap. I breathe him in, forcing myself to memorise the scent.

“You changed your hair,” he notes, fiddling with the short strands that just barely reach my neck.

“Mum took me to the salon immediately,” I say. Guess she wasn’t all that fucking pleased about the blond. “The woman made it too dark. I don’t like it.”

“Well, I do,” James says.

I smile into his neck.

I shouldn’t be happy at all. Things are about to get a whole lot worse for the both of us. But he’s touching me and I’m touching him, and everything just feels …  _right_. I know it’ll be gone the instant I leave this room, but I will revel in it for the few minutes I have.

“You shouldn’t have come,” James says.

I lift myself up. Our faces are only a few centimetres apart. His breaths wash over my face. “Why?” I ask, confused and hurt.

James continues stroking every piece of available skin. “Now that you’re here, I don’t want you to leave.”

Oh.

“I don’t want to leave,” I tell him.

“But you have to.”

“But I have to,” I agree. “But not yet. In a minute.”

I have to kiss him. I have to remember the feel of his mouth on mine.

Lowering my face the tiniest bit, I close my eyes and affix my lips to his. He can’t properly embrace me, and I can’t move too much for fear of further injuring him, but he is soft against me and that’s all that matters.

I was wrong before.  _Now_  everything is right. The seas have calmed. The earth has stopped turning. And it’s James and me against the world.


End file.
